La Garçonnière by Billy Wilder remains a must-see bittersweet comedy, and what's more, it takes place during Christmas.
Few films have had as much impact on the American film industry as Some like it hot. Released in 1959, Billy Wilder's crazy comedy made stars Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon shine like never before, and gave a huge boost to the Hollywood anthill by its transgressive use of cross-dressing. Many even consider the film to be responsible for the end of the famous code Hays, who dictated the rules of self-censorship in the productions of the City of Dreams.
Such success obviously does not leave one indifferent. As soon as the filming of the film ended, director Billy Wilder and his co-writer IAL Diamond know that they want to repeat the experience with Jack Lemmon, who is about to become their favorite actor. Might as well strike the iron while some like it hot…
The result is La Garçonnière (a French title which reveals more than the sober The Apartment of the original version), a romantic comedy with the particularity of taking place during Christmas celebrations in Manhattanfor not always being very funny, and – incidentally – for being one of the most beautiful films ever produced in Hollywood.
La Garçonnière, a Christmas film?
If the democratization of Saint Nicholas and its transformation into a celebration as much a family as a national one in the United States dates from the end of the 19th century, it was only during the first half of the 20th century that Christmas becomes a real commercial eventand a celebration of the economic success of the American population.
The first real “Christmas Movies” produced by Hollywood appeared in the 1940s, and this was not by chance. This is a period of strong growth, where consumerism is booming. Ideal conditions to allow the emergence of a cinematographic subgenre which has gained in codifications over time, while retaining a thematic essence which could be summarized as follows: a fundamental ideological tension between careerist individualism on the one hand, and altruistic love on the other.
La Garçonnière perfectly illustrates this dynamic. Jack Lemmon plays an employee of a New York insurance company who uses unconventional methods to secure a promotion: CC Baxter, whose nice name is, lends his apartment to his superiors so that they can take their lovers there in secret, far from the gaze of their wives.
The situation becomes complicated when Jeff Sheldrake, the big boss of the insurance company played by a magnificently detestable Fred MacMurray, takes his girlfriend to Baxter's apartment for New Year's Eve on December 24. Because this young woman, named Fran Kubelik and played by the exceptional Shirley MacLaine, is none other than the one for whom CC Baxter's little heart beats…
The dramaturgy is therefore based on moralistic issues which are constitutive of the Christmas film subgenre. The hero finds himself, as the story progresses, having to choose between his advancement within the company, that is to say material gains (an individual office, a pretty hat, etc.) and his conscience. .
Because if he knows well that Fran Kubelik is madly in love with Sheldrake, the latter leads her for a ride and makes her promises that he has no intention of keeping, such as leaving his wife. Can Baxter allow her superior to manipulate her like this in her own apartment, in exchange for the comfort of life he gets?
La Garçonnière is however rarely mentioned in the lists of the best Christmas films. The fault is probably its excessive originality, which prevents it, despite its adherence to some of the structural codes of the genre, from being one stricto-sensu. Indeed, if the majority of the story takes place during the festivities of December 25, the conclusion escapes narrative conventions and takes place during the transition to the new year.
In doing so, Wilder's film is as much a “Christmas Movie” as it is a “New Year's Eve film” – as long as the genre exists. Above all, it hides under its pretty decorations and its light comedy a dark melancholy which is enough to confuse more than one person.
Sweet and sour cinema
La Garçonnière is still presented today as a comedyand rightly so. The film is very funny, notably thanks to the virtuosity of Jack Lemmon's acting, whose miseries are staged with such exaggeration in the gestures that we can't help but laugh. The actor, gifted with fabulous physicalityconstantly interacts with the elements of the decor and manages to make something amusing just with a movement of the head or a gesture of the hand.
Without ever hesitating to go all out, Lemmon exploits the leeway given to him by Wilder and Diamond's writing – the co-writers gave him free rein when it came to improvisation as long as it didn't affect the dialogue – and manages to bring his character to life, as when we see him use a tennis racket to drain pasta in his kitchen. But the best comedic idea in the film is the inclusion of a couple of neighbors who are convinced that all the women who parade through the apartment are his lovers. They therefore imagine him to be the Dom Juan the most active in all of Manhattanhe who actually spends his evenings alone in front of his television.
If CC Baxter's misfortunes make one smile, this is not the case for the other protagonist of the film, the very sad Fran Kubelik. The young woman's blindness in her one-sided relationship with her boss Jeff Sheldrake is not amusing. The character of Shirley MacLaine wears on her face, more frozen and closed than that of Lemmon, the tragedy of a woman who knows she is condemned to love desperately without ever receiving anything other than empty words.
Incapable of acting for his own good, his only power of action lies precisely in the pretty lines offered to him by the screenwriters Wilder and Diamond; her words allow her to ironize about her situation with elegance and wit, but which are only tiny bandages on a very damaged heart.
The scenario changes suddenly when it tentative de suicidean abrupt and singular enough narrative pivot in a production of the period to be particularly striking. It's as if Fran Kubelik, condemned to go back and forth through her job as a lift attendant without ever having any possibility of evolution, saw only this one and only solution to end the endless cycle of his relationship with Sheldrake.
The arrival of the specter of death has an immediate impact on the film, stifling laughter and tightening throats. Above all, he reminded the public of the time that Billy Wilder's cinema has not always been that of the joyful and festive buffoonery of Some like it hot.
1+1=3, a sum film for Billy Wilder
This is why La Garçonnière succeeds in being the most unique film of its director's career : by combining light comedy and the codes of Christmas cinema with tragic melancholy, it manages to position itself exactly halfway between the two extremes of the filmography of Wilder.
The German filmmaker began his career in Los Angeles under the direction of the comedy genius Ernst Lubitschand participated in the writing of two of his partner's best films: Bluebeard's Eighth Wife et Ninotchka. When he moved on to directing, Wilder even put up a sign in his dressing room that read “What would Lubitsch do?”proof of the enormous influence his mentor had on him.
However, Billy Wilder's first big success does not have an ounce of comedy on its film: Insurance on deathreleased in 1944 is a pure-blooded Noir film. In the years that followed, the director persists and signs in dark and dramatic worksas evidenced by the superb Twilight Boulevard et The Chasm of Chimeras. At the same time, he also allows himself to make the whole country cry with laughter with Some like it hot or Seven years of reflectionachieving a split worthy of Jean-Claude Van Damme.
No other filmmaker excelled as much in Hollywood during the golden age on both counts. In this, La Garçonnière is therefore the perfect synthesis of everything Wilder represents. Funny but never too much, tragic but without being depressing, it has impeccable and almost miraculous balance.
In 2006, the Screenwriters Guild of America established a list of the best screenplays of all time. In the top 15, Billy Wilder appears three times. La Garçonnièreobviously, is one of them. Now you know what to watch at Christmas.
